


Peluda

by Gunney



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25091971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunney/pseuds/Gunney
Summary: John's quest to find a spectacular prize is preempted by an earthquake. Gary comes to the rescue.
Relationships: John Constantine/Gary Green
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

The Peluda was an ugly, massive, blob of a creature. It had been slogging through the refuse of France likely since before written history began. It fed off of excrement and therefore loved ill-kept pastures and shit pits. It might have once begun it's life as a tiny thing but it was now the size of a cow. It's purple skin was thin and showed blue and green veins along its arms and legs. It looked like an overgrown porcupine but with tubes of flesh instead of quills.

John's research had indicated that it did have quills, but most of the time they remained hidden, receding into the fleshy, purple hot dogs that flopped and flipped on its back. The quills held a poison that incapacitated it's prey but left it alive, breathing, seeing, and hearing.

John had read up. He had come prepared. He had cast spells of protection on his trench coat, shirt and pants. He'd brought a Mayan shield rumored to have been passed down from the great kings of South America for centuries, never pierced by sword or arrow. He'd brought a bloody gun. 

And he had...his apprentice. Letting Gary tag along, in point of fact, telling Sara Lance that this was a training run for Gary, had given him the week of leave and no-questions-asked that he'd needed to collect this particular gem.

What he'd needed was an egg. The egg of a Peluda, a thing as rare as a virgin, because the creature ovulated only once every hundred years. He'd been waiting for almost twenty of those hundred, knowing that the ultimate prize would be one of the Peluda's eggs. Twenty years to plan! He wasn't about to let his allegiance to the Legends, or even Gary bloody Green get in the way of acquiring it.

Yet now he was half buried under rubble because the most ill-timed earthquake in the world had chosen to strike right as John was approaching the nest. They'd followed the creature, silent as death, all the way to its lair. He and Gary had waited days in the dark and damp to learn it's patterns.

John had finally convinced Gary to go for a beer run, clearing him out of the tunnels before the warlock managed to catch a glimpse of one creamy shell, half buried in the muck that the Peluda called a nest. He was nearly to it, muscles aching desperately from the slow plod toward the goal when the walls had come down around him and the nest, blocking the exits while creating a brightly lit hole in the ceiling.

When John came to, he was ready to murder every last one of the gods that had seen fit to rob him of his prize.

His face was directly in the path of the sunlight beaming down through the hole in the ceiling. His right side, from his shoulder to his toes was under the weight of who knew how much rock, mud and dirt. He felt like his right hip had been pinched by a giant pair of fingers. He, and the eggs, were now in a valley where a tunnel had once been, and John found he was part of the southernmost wall of that valley.

John brushed dirt from his face, then started to dig into the wall only to have fistfuls of dirt land in his mouth. He spat and jerked his head out of the way, feeling a distant tug on his hip. John paused long enough to catch his breath and rethink his tactic. He craned his neck until he found a piece of the rotting ladder that had been on the other side of the nest. He'd spotted it, and known he couldn't trust it to get him back to the surface even without trying it. 

A few minutes of straining put his hand in reach of the broken wrung sticking up out of the dirt and he dragged it closer. It broke from the side support easily and John used it to gently scrape away at the dirt. His right arm came free after some fiddling. 

He had a bloody gash on his forehead, directly over the bridge of his nose. His right leg wouldn't budge and there was a weight on his right hip that had begun to hurt ever so slightly. 

With both arms free John braced his hands against the wall and tried pushing away from it, hoping to skip hours of careful digging and force himself away from the collapse. His torso came free and he could feel his right foot kicking loose. The minute he tried to move his hip, something scraped against the bones in his pelvis, and the feeling, like chewing on tin foil, made him want to puke and scream at the same time. His single attempt at yanking his lower half free would be his only attempt so long as the memory of that feeling stayed with him.

John began to shiver and quake uncontrollably and all voluntary movement stopped until he could get a handle on the mess of sensations invading his brain. He had other bruises and cuts but nothing serious. The shield he'd been holding had protected his left side, and the gun was there, useless but in reach. The peluda had been well away from the nest when he approached and judging by the debris, she wasn't getting in any sooner than he was getting out.

John went back to the broken ladder wrung, digging at the loose soil and broken bits of asphalt. Each stroke into the dirt rocked his hips and brought a stab of pain that he ignored. He could work past the pain, holding his breath and gritting his teeth for only so long before his body demanded a rest. Each time he rested, the dirt would slowly begin to fill in the empty space John had created. Two steps forward, fifteen steps back. 

Above him John could hear the distant sounds of the city responding to the earthquake. Sirens, helicopters, small explosions likely caused by fires or rescue efforts. He judged he'd only been unconscious for twenty or thirty minutes. Time enough for the initial shock of the quake to pass and for those who had survived it to begin to respond. 

He'd only begun to remember that there was such a thing as aftershocks when the first one hit. 

The unsupported concrete above him cracked and fell as the ground heaved up and down. The mud at the bottom of the pit he was in sloshed and tsunamied around the hole like the sludge at the bottom of a cup of turkish coffee. John grabbed the shield and held it over his face and torso, at the mercy of the pain in his trapped hip and the whims of mother earth. 

The aftershock ended and the concrete above him groaned, but remained in place. John took in a deep breath and heaved the shield, and the accumulated dirt that had built up on top of it, toward the pit. The dirt plopped into the muddy water, landing around the crowned tops of two of the three eggs that had originally been in the Peluda nest. The dirt that had been supporting John's back, shoulders and legs had eroded away during the aftershock and he was now half hanging over the mud pit, trapped by his hip and whatever was keeping it there. 

John groaned, letting his head fall back, thoroughly exhausted. His back and legs were contorted, trying to fight gravity and the pain in his side. Another aftershock could bury him, or crush him under the concrete, or leave him hanging upside down. Despite the exhaustion John tackled the wall again with renewed vigor. 

He gritted his teeth and jabbed the ladder wrung into the dirt, over and over, clearing the dirt away with one hand while stabbing with the other. His lungs strained to give him enough oxygen, his back throbbed from fighting gravity and his neck was becoming frozen in place at that odd angle. 

John had little warning. He spotted a few inches of metal close to his hip and the wrung he was using started punching through the dirt and into a cavity beyond it. He dug upward, the job easier and easier, not thinking about gravity. The wall let him loose and he tumbled free, sliding ten feet into the muddy, ice cold water, taking the wall of dirt with him. 

John let out a cry of surprise, then another cry of pain. He slapped his arms against the surface of the water struggling for purchase. He hadn't bothered to wonder how deep the water was until he was in it, and his first attempt at getting to his feet failed miserably. His waving arm struck the metal embedded in his hip at least once and the ripple effect of pain threatened to paralyse him and drown him, even while the dirt kept sliding down into the water. 

John flailed and scraped and scrabbled his way up, over the lip of the nest, and past it to the small square of concrete opposite the wall that had entrapped him. The minute he was on solid ground John collapsed, shivering uncontrollably, ready to puke or pass out, or both simultaneously. 

Wide open, feverish eyes zeroed in on the ladder wrung that had gone through his coat, through his pants and into his hip. He tore open the hole in his coat, then his pants, then his boxers, trying to find skin. Trying to see how bad it was. The wrung dented the skin just under his hip bone and disappeared into the muscle, surrounded by a small amount of blood and a bruise that covered most of his right side. 

John lay back and breathed. He rested his right hand against the base of the wrung and told himself a beautiful story about a gorgeous nymph coming to his aid, healing his wounds, seducing him and making him feel pleasures as he had never known. He was nearly to arousal when he pulled up and away as hard as he could. 

The bar scraped on bone sending a horrible, skin crawling pain down his legs and up his spine, into his groin and up his neck. He cried out in pain, yanking his hand away from the rod and clinging to the ground, shaking even harder than before. A whimper escaped before he could stop it. The rod had come up about an inch, but wasn't going to come out. Not easy, anyway. 

John lay back, panting. He straightened his spine and his legs and moaned when a cloud moved and the sun came through, casting a warm blanket over his wet clothes and skin. Maybe...maybe if he never again touched the metal rod, and if the sun just stayed where it was, and if the blackness threatening to overwhelm him did just that...maybe death would be pleasant. 

"John?" 

"Gary.." John muttered. 

"John can you hear me?!" 

The voice echoed down to him and John wondered how, in the mess of what had to be an apocalyptic Paris, Gary Green had managed to find him. 

"Don't come too close, Gary." John tried to yell but it came out a breathless whisper. 

John heard the ceiling groan and watched dirt tumble down the wall that he'd been trapped in. A head appeared at the lip of the hole, along with the toe of a boot, outlined by the sun. 

"Oh..my god." Gary whimpered, then backed away from the edge. 

"Don't...don't come...you're going to.." 

"John I've got you. I've got you. I'm going to..." Gary cut off and more dirt came down, along with large chunks of rock and concrete. 

"Don't come down here, Gary..." John forced more energy into his voice and this time he could hear it echoing around the pit. 

"I can't...I'm going to try..." Again Gary went quiet but for grunts, and John could see a loose chunk of concrete to his right start to bow like a diving board. 

"Gary! Stop..bloody hell. GARY!" 

The shaking and the crumbling and the groaning stopped and the head appeared again, this time directly above Constantine. The sun shown on his face and John could see that Gary had knocked his head on something and it was now bound in white, blood stained gauze. 

"Take it easy, mate. Alright? I'm glad to see you, but you can't help me by comin' down here." John panted, waiting for his words to reach his apprentice. "Ok?" 

"Ok. Ok, yeah...oh god. What...what do I do?" 

That...that was a good question. John thought of the obvious answer, even as he slowly pushed himself up on his elbows, staring at the Peluda eggs. Coming away from this misadventure physically intact, and with his prize in tow, seemed grossly unlikely with most of the options John had at hand. At the back of his mind he was also remembering the Peluda herself. Of all the endangered magical species, she was the closest to extinction and losing her, or her babies felt like another dark mark of many on his soul. 

John blinked as he looked back up to the hole in the ceiling. "You alright, Gary?" 

"I'm...I hit my head while trying to save some children from a falling building." Gary admitted, and John laughed, his voice pitching higher than usual. Gary and his optimistic, blindly-loving soul be blessed. 

John pushed himself up, letting out a satisfying groan in response to the burst of pain before he settled against the wall of dirt behind him. The sun was still there, still warming him, but the minute it went behind a cloud, or god-forbid, it set, he would be freezing again. 

"You...you look awful." Gary said, sounding close to tears. 

"I've been better." John mumbled, but the mere presence of a friendly face had done more for him in the past few minutes than he’d expected. "Much as I'd hate to admit it, might be best to let the authorities come and rescue me. I don't suppose you've heard from our friends?" 

"S-sara said they were going to be in 1946 London. Something to do with keeping Winston Churchill from helping the Nazis win the war..." Gary trailed off, sounding lost and John wondered just how bad the head injury was. 

"So that's a no, then?" John asked. 

"Umm.." 

"Right...you hear those sirens? Probably be best if you can flag down an ambulance or a firefighter. I wouldn't say no to a blanket either...or a stiff drink.." 

John waited, listening to the wind whistling softly past the mouth of the hole, his eyes closed as he soaked up as much of the energy from the sun as he could. When he didn't get an answer John squinted his eyes open and peered up at the shadowy head still hanging over the lip of the hole. 

"Gary!"

The head jolted, moaned and John felt a kernel of worry squirming in his belly. "How bad are you hurt, mate?" He called up. 

Gary made soft groaning noises, breathing hard like he'd just woken from a nightmare. "I'm..good..head. Hurts." 

"I'll bet it does..." John said softly, keeping his eyes trained on Gary. 

"Go get some help for us, Gary." He encouraged the man gently, repeating the command encouragingly until Gary's head had pulled back from the edge. He heard the stumbling steps of the tall man walking away and closed his eyes. 

As he settled back he could feel the end of the rod moving, scraping against muscle and bone inside him and he froze. Every muscle around his hip had begun to cramp in his efforts to keep still. They weren't muscles used to the strain and he knew, sooner rather than later, he'd have to make another attempt to remove the rod. 

He had an idea of how to get it out with minimal blood loss but it wasn't a pleasant one. Still, with Gary hopefully going after help, John figured he had better than average chances of survival. Shame he'd have to leave the eggs behind. Shame about the Peluda. 

John let his muscles go lax, those that would, and lay slumped against the dirt wall, wondering if an earthquake could kill a Peluda. He stared at the tops of the eggs, even less of them visible now after all the shaking and dirt-slides. 

“M’sorry, wee beasties.” He said, softly, even as he realized that his being there in that pit had neither caused, nor worsened the situation. For once. 

That thought put a bright kernel of an idea in the back of John’s brain. An idea, that would develop into a plan if he thought about it long enough. First things, first, though. 

John took a long, deep, stalling breath and studied the rod impaling him. It had to come out. With the metal scraping against his pelvis he couldn’t move at all. With the rod gone, and so long as he wasn’t bleeding to death, he’d have a lot more mobility and could maybe see about rescuing himself a little. 

John focused his mind and thought of the words he would be using before they passed his lips. By the time his ears had heard them he already felt the power bleeding into his veins, down his arms and into his hands. He closed both fists around the rod and let the power continue through them, super heating the metal as quickly as he could, steeling his mind against the pain that went all the way down to his toes and curled the hair at his neck. 

He generated so much heat, so quickly, that the muddy water soaking his clothes began to steam and evaporate. John struggled to remain focused, knowing that his eyes had rolled back into his head and the whites were probably glowing. He had begun to smell burning skin, hair and cloth when he forced the rest of the energy he had gathered into his muscles and yanked. 

The rod came free, charring muscle, blood vessels and skin as it did, searing the wound shut. It hurt like bloody hellfire. John tossed the rod away from him in the same motion that he had used to pull it from his hip and collapsed backward, struggling to remember how many of the functions of his body he needed to keep living. 

Breathing was the hardest decision to make, but he made it, filling the hole with a tortured gasp for air and curling onto his side. A series of keening moans followed, the noises animal in nature and sounding like he’d been joined in his hole by a pair of coupling werewolves. The sounds eventually drifted into silence and John could tell that the sun was once again behind a cloud. 

The blood receded from his ears and he could hear the sirens again, and the chop of a helicopter blade. His fingers and toes unclenched, then his legs went lax and John got better, deeper breaths into his lungs. His hip burned, ached, throbbed, but when he rolled onto his back he didn’t feel like he’d been struck by lightning. An improvement. 

John carefully peeled charred clothing away from his skin, made sure the wound wasn’t bleeding too badly, then shakily pushed himself up to a sitting position again. Above him the shadow of a bird swept over the hole, then the cloud moved and he was bathed in the sun again. There was the start of a breeze above him and it served to sweep some of the stink out of his pit, brushing against the sweat staining his skin. 

John worked his way to his feet, much the way that a climber might scale a wall, making sure that he had at least three points of contact at all times. 

He was able to put weight on his hip, if very little, and he chose to believe that meant he hadn’t broken anything. Bracing his hip with a hand John limped around his patch of concrete, studying the walls, the water, the ceiling. 

He wasn’t that far from the surface but the quake had created an egg shaped cavern out of the tunnel. Anything putting weight around the edges of the ceiling would certainly cave it in, and the only way to avoid being squished was standing in the muddy water in the middle of the hole. 

John pawed at the walls around him until he had a length of broken pipe that would serve as a walking stick. He used this to fish in the water for the two eggs, gradually sitting again before he managed to retrieve one egg, then the other. The third, if it wasn’t buried under dirt and concrete, had to have been under the water. He wasn’t going to jab the pipe around trying to find it and risk piercing the egg. 

John took his coat off and dried off the first egg, then the second, holding each up to the bright sunlight and watching the slow, lackadaisical movements of the creatures inside. They looked like pill bugs with long tails, tiny feet kicking at the amniotic fluid. 

John wrapped them both in his coat and lay down, curled around the eggs, in the sun, finally letting his body give in to the fatigue. He slept in fits, sounds from the world above him filtering into his subconscious. He heard what sounded like children laughing and jolted awake to recognize the sheer cries of birds above him fighting over something. He could hear heavy equipment and sirens, and felt tiny shockwaves in the earth as buildings were toppled or cleared. 

He woke shivering, in shadow, desperately trying to derive warmth from the eggs. His shirt was soaked with sweat and there was blood plastering his pants to his hip. John stayed where he was, watching the glowing clouds, waiting for the sun to return. Each shiver woke the wound in his hip, and he could feel the uncomfortable drip of his own blood crossing his loins and pooling on the concrete. John tried to look at his watch. Tried to gauge how long it had been since the quake, since he had last seen Gary. 

His watch was broken of course, but the angle of the sun, when it finally reappeared made his heart sink. It was summer...meaning longer days, shorter nights. He’d been in the tunnel since nine that morning and the sun was now casting a reddish glow against the clouds. Sun down wasn’t supposed to be until 9pm at least. He’d been in the whole about 9 hours, and night was not that far off.

The shivering went away as the sun warmed him and he had to work at resisting the urge to sleep again. He couldn’t spend the night in the hole. He wouldn’t be able to keep a fire going without killing himself and he could already feel the ache, and the flush to his face that indicated a fever. Overnighting in the hole wasn’t an option. 

John sat up, adjusting as his hip would allow before he levered up to his feet again. The wound had stiffened up while he slept, the bruises forming and making his hip feel like fine china. 

He studied the walls, remembering his kernel of an idea. It was dangerous. Potentially stupid, but hell...he was John Constantine. Stupid. Spades. 

It would mean sacrificing the third egg, but John saw few choices left in his arsenal. And Gary, as loyal as he was, couldn’t do much with a head injury slowing him down. John moved to the edge of his concrete pad, stretched the pipe out and started at the highest point on the opposite wall, forcing the dirt down and spreading it out. Slowly, carefully, he might be able to build a mound of dirt that would get him, and the remaining eggs out of this nasty ditch. 

John explained all this to the eggs as he worked, pausing to talk, to rest, then going back to work. 

“Sadly...your mum isn’t likely to be in the best of conditions. She was off finding num-nums when this bloody quake hit. I doubt we’ll be seein’ her again.” John stared at the eggs, both of them still but for the occasional quiver. “But..I know a group of people that made a decent go at raising a dragon. Hopefully we’ll be able to see the two of you born healthy.” 

Turning back to the wall John reached as high up as he could and stabbed at the dirt loosing large chunks of it and sending them tumbling into the water. “I’m certain Gary would be happy to be your new dad, at least until your spines start to develop.”

John chuckled at that thought, imagining Gary with a burping cloth over his shoulder, chasing baby Peludas around the Waverider. 

“Of course, before the two of you get too big we’ll have to find the right time period to return you to.” John paused at his work. “Sometime after the middle ages, but before the industrial revolution..” John nodded to himself, working out the details as the mound in the water began to rise. 

“Now, if mum is still with us, I suppose… Well, I suppose I should be leavin’ the two of you here shouldn’t I? Which begs the question, Johnny...why did you think it a good idea to steal the Peluda eggs, in the first place?” 

John jabbed at the wall of dirt, watching a chunk of broken concrete avalanche down the side and splash into the water against the north wall. That started a series of smaller avalanches of dirt that he guided into the muck. 

“Avarice.” John finally answered, his tongue delighting in the word. “I am the Scrooge McDuck of warlocks.” He attacked the wall with greater fervor. “You know I had the most marvelous recipes for you lot, set aside.” 

John stumbled back a step, avoiding the splash of murky, muddy water that lapped up on his concrete block. “Healing potions, invisibility potions. Recipes for magic that were written centuries before you were born...you’d have been a feast of magic.” 

John went after the wall, dragging down less and less dirt and more and more asphalt and concrete. A few of the larger chunks would tumble a little too close to the eggs and he soon stopped so that he could move them to a safer spot. 

Bending over sent a flash of pain through him that took his breath away and John ended up on the concrete in a heap. He crawled with the eggs as far back as the size of the concrete pad would allow, then took a deep breath and looked at the wound. 

The bruises had darkened, and combined with the burns to make his hip almost black. A slow ooze of blood was coming from a corner of the wound and any part of his skin that wasn’t black, was red with infection. The sun had sunk further and John was shivering already. The mound of dirt that he had created was tall enough to give him an additional three feet, at best. Not enough, by his estimation, to get him up to the surface. 

He had more work to do. And lying about, shivering, wasn’t going to get him through the night. With a heave John got back to his feet and started digging. 

He tried singing. He sang for an hour every punk song he could remember, including the one he had written as a much younger man, and never sung for anyone but Natalie. How long ago that had been. He sang the shanties and sailor songs that he remembered his father’s drunken friends teaching him. He apologized to the eggs for not knowing a proper lullaby. Not having a mother, and having only a father who resented your existence, meant that particular comfort had never come into his life. He sang the song that Natalie sang to Astra. There was an old Creole song that Des had sung to him. John saved that one for last, just before his voice cut off and he was forced to lean on the pipe while his lungs heaved. 

The whole time he’d been working he was standing in relatively one spot, shifting his hips minimally. Trying to pick up his right leg, or bend it in anyway proved to be a painfully foolish effort. When John collapsed, unable to work any longer without some rest, he landed on his left side and stayed there until the pain faded, the sweat dried, and his body began to respond to the cool of the night. 

“John? John..can you hear me?” 

Gary was back. Seemed he always turned up right when John was ready to throw in the towel. John murmured something to the eggs about Gary that faded as his mind tilted toward sleep. He was nearly there, numb and exhausted. 

“John!?” A light flashed down into the hole, focusing on his head, making his tired eyes burn. “I couldn’t..I couldn’t find anyone. Everything’s crazy up here. There are bodies everywhere, and fires and…” The voice faded again and John heard something whistle through the air before it impacted his back and shoulders. 

John jolted but he’d barely felt it. Just another annoyance interrupting his nap. 

“John...please wake up.” The light was back, searching all around the hole, but always coming straight back to him in the end, shining in his eyeballs. “John? JOHN!” 

Constantine jolted, pushed his head away from his shoulders, moaned softly and tilted over onto his back. He opened his eyes to slits and stared up at the night sky, his arms and legs splayed. The flashlight played over him again, pausing on the dark, wet stain on his trousers, then going up to his face. “I found some sheets. I made a rope out of them. It’s tied to a telephone pole. It...it was the best I could do.” 

John lifted his head and looked around the pit. There was a sheet dangling down, the very end of it lying in the water, starting to soak up the brown goo. 

“We gotta bring the eggs up first.” John called to the ceiling. His head fell back to the concrete and he let the cool seep into his fevered brain. Hadn’t he been shivering moments ago? 

Using his arms to get around and dragging his legs John retrieved the sheet rope from the water and dragged it to the eggs. He formed a pouch out of the bottom most sheet and secured the eggs in it, making certain there was no way they could fall out. 

“Gary..” Distant sirens and crickets answered him. 

“Bloody hell...GARY!” John’s throat cracked, throwing him into a coughing fit that put him on his back, moaning in pain. Somehow, everything was connected to the hip bone. He was still on his back when the sheet began to rise, swaying as it slowly ascended. 

John pushed his torso up and watched the bundle carefully as it navigated the jutting out ledge of concrete, rebar and asphalt. The eggs had cleared the hole when he heard the dirt starting to shift behind him. John tossed his gaze over his shoulder, caught sight of a clump of dirt the size of his head flying away from the wall, the beginnings of a scaled purple claw reaching out from behind the dirt. 

“Gary. GARY!! Send them back down! Send them back- dammit. GARY!” Adrenaline did wonders. John was on his feet and splashing into the water and up the mound he had created in minutes. The Peluda came snuffling through the hole, following some scent with her nose, her eyes no bigger than marbles, squinted shut. John’s voice had dwindled to an outraged squeak and there was little shouting left that he could do. Drawing even more attention to himself seemed foolish anyway. 

He clawed his way to the 2 foot shelf at the top of the wall he’d been buried in earlier that day and watched the creature as it snuffled around the hole. Had he buried her nest? Would she still be able to tell that it had once been there. Would she find the first egg somehow…

There was no question that she could smell him. He watched her nose hover over a patch of bloody concrete, then lift and sniff at the air. Her nose was feet from the ceiling when the eggs came sailing back into the cavern, still encased in the sheet. They smacked her good on her venturing nose and she squealed, her voice loud enough to shake the cavern. As the eggs were lowered the Peluda arched her back and the quills came out. John barely had time to roll over before the cave was filled with flying projectiles. The size and length of arrows, they flew into the water, thunked into the earth, arched gracefully out of the cave and into the air. One found it’s way into John’s hiding spot and he felt it punch into his left leg, just below the knee. His back stiffened and he bit into his knuckles to keep quiet. 

He shifted onto his stomach, buried his face against the dirt and forced the silent scream into the earth, riding out the new pain. By the time he was able to breathe again the Peluda had realized what had hit her and was pawing at the sheet, her nails tearing into the fabric until she had her prize. 

She snuffeled over the surface of each egg, licking them with a fat tongue and then pawing them along the dirt, under her stomach and into a marsupial like pouch under her belly. John never would have guessed. The quill in his leg pretty much guaranteed that no one had ever gotten close enough to a mother Peluda to witness all of the creature’s nesting habits. Despite the chills creeping up from his leg and sawing into his chest, John felt he’d achieved glimmer of the prize he’d been after. 

Gary’s light flickered down into the hole to break the spell and he managed to shine it right in the beast’s eyes, causing her to scream before turning back to the tunnel. Her scream undermined the stability of the dirt under John and he began to slide back into the hole. Summoning the last of his strength John got his feet under him and launched himself at the rope of sheets. He caught it eight feet above the cavern floor, and forced himself to climb, hand over hand. 

He caught a glimpse of Gary’s face, just under the beam of a flashlight, staring open mouthed at him, before the bigger man ran to the pole he’d used to secure the sheet and started pulling John up the rest of the way. 

The concrete and asphalt crumbled as soon as John put his weight on it and he had to scramble to get to solid ground. Even then Gary somehow managed to drag his weight several feet through the loose gravel before John let go of the sheets. 

Constantine stared up at the stars, sucking fresh air into his lungs. Gary came to him, lifted his head and pillowed it with something soft. A hand rested lightly on his chest, then peeled the charred cloth back from his hip, ripped his pants open around the quill. John stared at the stars and let the world be as it was for a bit. He started to shiver and Gary got under him somehow, lifting him in a fireman’s carry that woke all the pains in his body. He buried a moan in Gary’s shirt and got an arm around the man’s neck. 

He didn’t know where he was being carried but it didn’t take long. He was set back down on what felt like a canvas cot and he felt Gary brush the hair back from his forehead with a cool palm. A blanket was laid over him and John shuddered involuntarily. His left leg leaked off the edge of the cot, to allow room for the quill still embedded in it. The blanket did curious things to his body, wracked as it was with fever, but the cot under him was encouraging him to sleep again. 

He heard something scraping across the floor and his head fell to the side, staring blearily at a second cot that Gary was bringing closer. The cots were placed side by side, and John could see for the first time that Gary had more than a head injury. One of his hands was bandaged and he had cuts and scrapes covering every exposed area of skin. 

“Sleep, Gary...sleep.” John slurred patting the man’s knee, his eyes already closed. “Sleep..” John was out before he could be sure that Gary had done what he said.


	2. Rescue

Sunlight filtered through the cracked windows of the abandoned cottage. It highlighted lace curtains, rustic counters and a farmhouse sink with a crack down the middle. It showed worn, but swept clean floors, scarred by the legs of two cots and dappled with spots of blood. A leg or a hand might jolt in and out of the light every few minutes, or upset the dust motes and set them swirling. If the breeze blew and shifted the curtains the light would shift with it. 

Each fit that wracked the body of one of the men in the room was followed by the other man pacing between the sink and the cots, his dust-coated pant legs flashing through the beams of light. A few times, the perfect dots of blood would end up under his shoes and be splattered, reflecting the sun and almost glittering as they came to rest again across the floor. Sometimes the water would spill out of the shallow bowl, casting rainbows as the drops fell, that were too miniscule to see by the naked eye. 

When John finally managed to drink the equivalent of two bowls of water, when Gary was able to cut through the spine of the quill and stabilize the barb still buried in Constantine’s leg. When he’d at least covered the wounds and done his best to stop the bleeding, and Constantine was finally resting, Gary stared at the light. Like a book-starved bibliophile his eyes took in every finite detail of the floor, and the way the light reacted to each feature. 

It was the only thing he could focus on to avoid losing his sanity and sinking into babbling fits of terror. There were other things to do. Soaking the cloth, wiping John down with it every few minutes to try and control the raging fever. He had to leave the cottage soon, to try to scrounge up food, the supplies he needed to clean the wounds, try to fight the infection. There had been food drops, great crates of supplies dumped into the city. They were too far from the city center for Gary to make it there and back before dark, and the apprentice didn’t trust what might happen to John while he was gone. 

There was a garden though, ten blocks away. It had been gated and the house looked abandoned and Gary knew he could get herbs and vegetables out of it, even if they weren’t quite ready to be harvested yet. 

He gave himself an hour. He soaked the cloth and wiped John down, changed the bandages and piled up enough wood to get a fire going that evening in the fireplace and keep it going all night. He closed and blocked the door of the cottage before he left, forcing aching legs to a jog to carry him quickly through the city. 

Hadn’t this once been called the city of light? And now the only light came from the sun. Gary passed empty houses. He passed houses that had signs painted on them warning for everyone to stay away. Some of them had red X’s. Abandoned. And empty by now of anything useful. Gary kept going. 

He had to walk for a bit, his empty belly and the constant throbbing in his head slowing him, sapping his energy. He found a patch of wild black raspberries. Most of the berries were plucked but the ones at the top were still there, ripe and ready to fall from the branches. He filled his mouth with them, barely tasting them. Some of them he saved, plopping them into his pockets. Then he went on. 

On to the house with the garden. Pollen hung in the air around it, the trees were full and lush with leaves and the house looked like an oasis. It had been too far away to carry John, or Gary would have tried breaking into the house, and setting up his shelter there. Gary walked around the garden wall, watching the windows. Making sure. 

He scaled the wall, crushing the berries in his pocket in the process, but they weren’t a priority anymore. He found a 2-gallon watering can in the shed and he started to fill it with juvenile beets, carrots, radishes and onions. He found garlic, basil, parsley, foxglove and hemp. As John’s apprentice he had first been taught how to recognize the appearance, purpose and names of the “forest apothecary” and Gary felt tears welling in his eyes, grateful for John’s teaching. Desperate that it would save his teacher’s life. 

Gary left half of every plant where it was. Another lesson, you never rob the forest of all it’s riches. The natural world was an unending pantry, but only if you left the majority of it to grow and propagate. He could hear John’s voice, rolling in his head, teaching him these lessons with a twinge of testiness. 

Gary found a sharpening stone and garden shears in the shed as well. He found bailing twine and a basket to carry more of his bounty in. He even found a metal pot that, once it was cleaned, could be used to boil water. There was a weeping willow in the garden and Gary gathered leaves, bark and tendrils from it. He found lime, charcoal, salt and baking soda. He filled his basket and his watering can until he could fit no more. 

He climbed the wall again and said a blessing for the owners. Something he had learned on his own, in the hours he’d had to study John’s books. Then Gary started jogging back to the cottage. 

It was noon, or close to it, when he got there. The cot was empty, there were drops of blood going from the kitchen of the cottage, down the hallway and towards the collapsed part of the house. Gary put his bounty on the counter, secured the door, then went in search for the warlock. 

John had crawled into a tight, dark corner and lay in a crumpled heap, sweating through his shirt and pants, unconscious. Gary tried shaking him awake, but got only moans. He carefully pulled John from the tight space and carried him back to the cot, covering the sunlit windows with the sheets that he had unknotted. 

Gary started a fire, loosened the bolt holding the garden shears together and set about sharpening the blades with the stone. He crushed the salt and the baking soda and boiled water in the pot making a paste. With John still unconscious Gary cleaned the wound at his hip. He used the shears to cut away dead and charred skin, cleaning out the infection that had begun under it. The scar the man would have, if he survived, would be unsightly to the say the least. 

Gary wore a cloth over his mouth to block the smell of the infection and worked for an hour, cleaning, boiling, cutting, cleaning again. He put the last of the paste on a square of boiled and dried sheet and wrapped John’s hips tightly. 

Gary cleaned out the pot, filled it with water and a quarter of the vegetables and herbs he’d gathered and let it cook over the remnants of the coals, conserving wood. 

There was no one there to be impressed at his knowledge. No one there to encourage him, and tell him not to give up hope. He hardly expected John to be aware, or empathetic enough to offer him the moral boost he desperately needed...so he gave it to himself. “You’re doing great, Gary. You’re saving yourself, and you’re saving John. You’re going to make it.” 

“You’re a bloody knight in...shinin’ armor…” 

Gary nodded. 

“Hip hurts…” 

“I had to do some work on it.” Gary explained. “The infection was bad. But I made a poultice out of salt a-and baking soda.” 

“And garlic?” 

“What...garlic? No...no, I put the garlic in the soup.” 

The voice groaned softly. “Smells great.” 

“Thank you.” Gary said, wiping at a pair of tears. 

“The quill...still in there?” 

Gary nodded, eyes lost in the faint glow of the coals. “I couldn’t get it out. Didn’t want to just pull. I found some shears. I’ll cut it out later.” 

The voice moaned. “That’s gonna hurt.” 

Gary nodded again. “You’ve been sleeping, most of the day. You woke up and crawled off into a corner...like you were preparing to die…” Gary felt the tears return, choking his throat. 

“Oh...not tryin’ to die, mate...too bloody hot in here.” 

Gary blinked, and his mind started to clear a little. He turned his head toward the man lying on the cot and squinted at the glazed, dark irises staring back at him. 

“You’re awake?” He whispered, scrambling to his knees and shuffling to the cot. 

John gave him a weak grin. “Not for long...but for now.” John let a long breath leave him then closed his eyes for a moment. “Hungry..” He admitted finally, in a soft whisper. 

A tired, toothy smile crept onto Gary’s face. He grabbed John’s hand and squeezed it, using the other hand to dash tears from his face. John squeezed the hand and a moment later Gary felt tension in his arm and helped John to sit up. They worked together to situate him on the cot such that his back was supported by the kitchen wall. John’s face contorted into a grimace of pain that tightened his chest and nearly brought his knees to his torso. Gary stayed with him, the grip on his hand not loosening until the pain passed and John was able to sit back, panting and once more bathed in sweat. 

Gary went to soak the cloth in cold water and returned with it, moving automatically to wipe it over John’s forehead, his neck, the exposed V of his chest. John stopped him halfway through, taking the cloth and holding it against his own neck. 

Gary moved to pull the soup from the fire. He let it cool, pouring some into the bowl he’d been using for John. He’d also found a cup and he put some soup for himself in there, sipping and chewing at the root vegetables. The soup was a little bitter but when he crushed some salt and stirred it in, it mellowed. 

Gary brought the bowl to John, hands shadowing the warlock’s until he was certain the injured man wouldn’t drop it on himself and make a bad situation worse. Once John had successfully taken a few sips, Gary sat back and began eating. Each sip seemed to wake John more and he began studying the confines of the cottage. 

“Where are we?” 

“South side of the city. Our Air BNB was crushed by the office building across from it. This one is owned by the same guy. I found it abandoned...so.” 

John nodded and sipped from his bowl, his jaw working slowly through the slices of vegetables. “Any luck getting the Waverider?” 

Gary’s eyes unfocused, his attention wavering as his mind returned him to that first desperate moment. Seeing John in the pit, contorted and pale. Knowing the chaos outside of the pit, knowing what the chaos of a concussion and digging himself out of a pile of wreckage had done to his head. That moment of terrified, sinking panic that stole his strength, robbed him of common sense, made him mute and dumb. 

“Gary.” 

Gary’s eyes snapped back and he shook his head. “I left messages until my phone died.” 

John nodded. “Don’t s’pose we have power?” 

Gary shook his head and watched John drain the contents of the bowl then hold it out for a second helping. Gary eagerly spooned more soup into the container and handed it back. The two fell into silence as they ate, a distant roll of thunder crawling towards them from the countryside beyond the city. 

“Was it an earthquake?” 

Gary nodded. “A strong one. I heard someone say that thousands may be dead, tens of thousands trapped or missing.” 

“Where was the epicenter?” 

“The tower.” 

“The Eiffel Tower!?” John asked, sitting back. His jaw was already tired of chewing so he let the chunk of vegetable sit in his mouth for a bit, savoring the familiar taste. 

“It’s not there anymore.” Gary whispered. “The Arch de Triumphe, the Paris Opera House, Notre Dame.” 

“Bloody hell…” John breathed and he wondered if this was somehow the work of someone or something other than mother nature herself. Had a demon, or a fate, or some unknown giant of a god seen fit to raise his or her ugly head after millennia of hibernation. Had the Peluda done it?! 

John lost himself in his memories trying to conjure up every word of every line he had read about the creatures of the past twenty years. He swallowed what as in his mouth and the bowl began to droop in his hands, so much so, that Gary lurched forward to grab it and set it by the fireplace. John passed out, still thinking. 

When he came to something was stabbing fire into his leg. He tried to jerk his leg away but a hand clamped down on him holding him still. The pain returned, worse than before and John clutched at the sides of the cot, gritting his teeth. It kept getting worse, hurting more, burning hotter and John couldn’t hold back the shout of anger. “Gary, stop! Stop mate!” 

The pain stopped. The edge went away immediately and the rest of it throbbed through the muscles of his leg, playing merry havoc before ebbing as well. John could feel the blood slipping down his calf, soaking into his pant leg. He panted, trying to make the spots before his eyes dissipate, turning his head to see the damage. He found Gary staring at the nasty hooked barb that had been at the end of the Peluda quill. John could still see small chunks of his flesh trapped in the hooks of bone and cartilage. The barb itself was the size of a regular marble, but to get it out, Gary had taken out a chunk the size of an Aggie. 

John wasn’t anxious to see the hole. He would feel it plenty. He passed out again, somewhere between the poultice and the first layer of sheets.


	3. Epilogue

By noon the next day John declared they needed to move. They had waited long enough for any sort of rescue from Paris or the surrounding countryside to have come and gone. There was no rescue to be had by simply sitting and waiting. While John was still feverish, it was greatly reduced, and Gary was risking an angry Constantine biting his head off if he insisted just one more time that they had to stay put. 

Gary packed their meager belongings into a canvas tote that he found in a closet, put one arm under John's shoulder and they were off. John insisted that they find the river and follow it north. It was clear the warlock had overestimated his stamina. He tired easily, and would slow down, but refused to stop. If anything John was worse as an ambulatory patient, than a stationary one. 

By three that morning they had made it to an aid station. John was taken in and treated by qualified doctors, they were both given sandwiches and soup and coffee, and Gary was able to charge his phone. John's accent, and then Gary's, had the director of the station pulling out maps to indicate where the American and British consulates had relocated their staffs. Further north there were operating airports that could get them home, or wherever else they wanted to go, free of charge. Gary saw it as a kindness, John declared France was getting rid of the people it wasn't directly responsible for as quickly as possible. 

They were given a ride the next morning to the airport, and after a bit of haggling and convincing, John managed to get two tickets to England, and car service from there to his house. He refused medical treatment and it seemed the overtaxed medical care system of France was more than happy to oblige. 

Almost five days after being trapped in the Peluda nest, John walked through the doors of his own mansion. Gary drew him a bath and despite knowing that he wasn't supposed to submerge a puncture wound, John stayed in the tub until the water had gone cold. He took a shower after, withstood Gary poking and prodding and dousing him with antiseptic, and finally considered himself whole when he was able to pull on a fresh pair of shorts, pants, shirt and tie. 

That evening Gary and he sat in his den, watching the world flash by on the telly news, as if they hadn't just been in the embrace of the chaos hours before. When Gary got up with a grunt and declared that he was going to bed, John rose too. The blonde man followed him into the bedroom and when Gary lay down, John lay with him. They didn't touch, and there was no sex, or anything close to sex. 

It was only closeness. John didn't want to be alone, Gary never wanted to be alone, and for a single night, that worked out for the both of them. 

In the evening of the following day they had a call from Sarah Lance. The Waverider and it's crew had completed their mission. Party at John's house and time to refuel and replenish. John and Gary kept France to themselves until Nate noticed the limp and Eva noticed Gary's new head scar. 

"So...what happened to the Pe-"

"Peluda..." John supplied then shrugged. "Don't know. Certainly nothing on the news about spotting a giant, purple porcupine. She collected her eggs and probably dug her way to safer haven under ground." 

"What about the third egg?" Eva wanted to know. "Should we be trying to salvage it? Is it just a lost cause?" 

The group looked around the circle they had formed on John's back patio, a roaring fire in the center. 

"I think we should leave well enough alone, babe." Sara said, her voice thoughtful and soft. "I'm...not saying your the reason the earthquake happened, John, but that city has enough to worry about without the Waverider showing up and making things worse." 

"Should we be going to help the France people?" Zari asked, a hint of compassion coming into her voice under the tones that indicated that she had already thought of how to turn the magnanimous gesture to her advantage. 

"I can look into it." Eva said. "We can join an aid group, fabricate some food or supplies, maybe even temporary housing." 

"Damn, babe." Sara exclaimed and the two blondes grinned at each other. 

"Gary and I owe some fresh vegetables and few gardening tools to a certain house near our lodging." John muttered, already halfway gone with the sweet thrum of pain pills and antibiotics in his system, thanks to Gideon. 

"I think Gary's earned a badge." Nate said, smirking. "The Peluda badge." 

"We get badges?" Gary asked, excitedly. 

"Well..no. But if we did...you've earned one." 

"To Gary!"


End file.
